How do materialist rationalize the abstract nature of mathematics? What, if all things consist of substance...

>What, if all things consist of substance, is the essence of a number built of?

This sentence is hurts me.

The concept of matter has changed in response to new scientific discoveries. Thus materialism has no definite content independent of the particular theory of matter on which it is based. According to Noam Chomsky, any property can be considered material, if one defines matter such that it has that property.

Matter is not a thing on its own, it is simply excitations the underlying field.

You should read up on quantum field theory to see why the problems you imagined are not problems at all.

If you want a good explanation for people who are not physicists you should try this one: lesswrong.com/posts/hc9Eg6erp6hk9bWhn/the-quantum-physics-sequence

How does that explain any of that? How does qm deal w objectivity/subjectivity wo referring to Metaphysics?

math is a language to describe patterns of materials
so what if there's a smallest particle?
why do i have to rationalize my faith in materialism?

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>how do materialist rationalize substance in and of itself if all things are made of it, even the smallest particles in existence? Does that not create an unending paradox?
It explains that quite well.

It makes most questions in the OP meaningless. Everything is excitations in the underlying field.

>What, if all things consist of substance, is the essence of a number built of?
This is just disturbed reasoning.
A number is just a concept, a concept is just information, information is described by information theory and does not require it to be matter.

Can u prove it's an excitation of it? For instance how does qm deal w concepts being a purely physical science?

>Can u prove it's an excitation of it?
That's explicitly what QFT is about. Science never proves anything by the way, it, like all knowledge is statistical.

QFT does not pretend to deal with concepts, I answered the questions OP had. But by all means continue moving the goal post.

what is it about Yea Forums and not understanding what materialism is?

I'm a materialist but this is a stupid fucking answer, how does mathematics come out of excitation in the underlying field? You didn't answer the question you just pushed it back to another concept of "material"

I explicitly answered his question, maybe you didn't like the answer. If he wants a better answer he better ask a better question.

>How do materialist rationalize the abstract nature of mathematics?
They don't, it's just a model. Thoughts can't be ever reconciled with reality. Best you can do is attempt to have your model as close to reality as possible.

>Does that not create an unending paradox?
It does (Goedel's incompleteness in mathematics). Mathfags don't worry much, they just say "it's the best we can do".

>Has matter always existed?
Any explanations about that are pure speculation/rationalization/faith anyway, even cosmologists don't dare to answer. So why ask, when the question is unanswerable.

>things that are real are made out of things that aren't real

rofl might as well believe in god

>science doesn't prove anything
Yes that's logical positivism and popper, the underlying development of science comes from philosophy

It's not moving the goal posts, materialists can't deal with concepts like numbers. You have some interaction with them, the physical manifestations of it, but you can't deal w concepts or any important immaterial aspects of the universe. Op's point rests

Not him but cause the question is answerable

Convince me against materialism

Literally the worst starting post in the world. But we will take this and turn it into a thread about can we objectively accept zorns lemma. Contrarian says Yes.

It depends on your notion of truth. Formally, truth itself has a self-defining paradox. This is why empiricism insists on models matching real world, instead and deride "purely reasoned abstracts".

Truth with axioms anchored in reality is far more convincing, and typically have far more explanatory power.

In materialism, your truth is only as good as your starting facts. If your starting facts are wrong, your answer is wrong. Garbage in, garbage out. If your start with nothing, you end up with nothing. It's not even wrong.

Mathematics is a product of the human mind and thus has material representation as neurological states. HAQ, QED, GG NO RE

>heh math is just information bud ask a better question
wow didn't know Witty browsed this board

That's fair but I think metaphysical reality has definable structures such as math or logic, dialecticism etc

T has no idea and has nothing to contribute

Math and logic indeed are the same rank as metaphysics - that is, they all fail to be self-defining. The difference is that logic is a tool to process fact in materialism. You start with a fact, pipe it through a system, and hope the answer is right. With logic, we have empirical evidence it gives good answer.

Whereas pure metaphysics doesn't do this. It eschews starting facts, yet it claims to provide answers about the real world from pure reason alone. This is the reason it's answers are viewed with much pessimism. The advantage is that it can answer things which are formally unanswerable from my materialist dogma above, the disadvantage is that the answers might be completely bogus.

Best use for metaphysics is to get intuitions. For instance, string theory is one example of nearly pure metaphysics. While the theory is a "theory of everything", it's by no means true description of the world. But it offers intuitive hints where to look for via "traditional" empiric routes (experimental physics). Unfortunately philosophy has much worse track record as a branch of metaphysics, providing far too few useful intuitions.

nice post lol

Well acknowledging the world is real is Metaphysics, acknowledging your truth subjectively will be different or same or how similar to objective truth is Metaphysics. Everything relies on Metaphysics. But law of non contradiction has proof in math and material, for instance 1+1 must equal 2. Ofc dialecticism follows this structure. Materialism isn't a bad foundation for some things but materialism isn't necessarily true just as immaterialism is. Certainly abstract things are harder to work through but they're certainly more fruitful and they do have anchors it's just harder to find.

>materialism isn't necessarily true
Materialism is very gung ho about degrees of empiric certainty.

>law of non contradiction
Doesn't guarantee completeness, because the law itself is expressed in logic (and yes, ALL of math reduces down to formal logic - in computers quite literally so). You inevitably get a chicken-egg "paradox", inherent to all abstract systems. You can prove the system self-consistent (logic can prove itself ... only through logic), the gotcha is that faulty logic can be proven via ... faulty logic.

Philosophy (especially platonic) is essentialy seen as "faulty" logic, primarily because it is inductive (inductive arguments are "may" statement, not "is" via formal logic).

Read Nietzsche and you'll find out. He touches on all those questions.

>idk but maybe this philosopher who denies immaterial things knows
Sure buddy try again

>try again
Okay, read Nietzsche and find out how all your questions are based on false premises to begin with. You want to know how someone who thinks oppositely from everything of Plato makes sense of the world? You read him.

>Materialism is very gung ho about degrees of empiric certainty
Sure for things inside itself not of itself tho

I'm up with you until you get to chicken egg thing. Logic necessarily precedes math, there's no chicken or the egg paradox there. Ontology necessarily precedes logic.
Faulty logic working within a system is coherentism vs foundationalism. Godel showed an example of this w his incompleteness theorem. There's no issue with Metaphysics that uve brought up

I have and he's cancer, not interesting and if you can't quote for OP then you've definitely just said nothing

You can be a materialist and a dualist by arguing that consciousness is an emergent property of certain material systems. Numbers exist as a creation of the mind that describe reality but don't have actual material existence.

I don't give a single shit that you don't find him interesting, you'll find the answers by reading him. I'm not spoonfeeding you.

>Math and logic indeed are the same rank as metaphysics
Agreed but this is a metaphysical claim.
>With logic, we have empirical evidence it gives good answer.
Logic is deeper than this, empiricism inescapably always presupposes logic.

Aside from your example of string theory I'd suggest physics hasn't dispensed with metaphysics at all, it has rather revolutionized it so we now have new questions.

He's cancer, he uses reality to deny it. Grow tf up and get over ur 19 and still edgy phase

Imagine reading this thread and still being a materialist

>Sure for things inside itself not of itself tho
The argument I'm making is that every purely abstract system is incomplete, per godel and wittgenstein - and even kant. Materialism is all about "grounding" points of this uncertainty whenever we can with empiric observation. You can of course claim our empiric observations are unsound too (though especially hilarious metaphysics of theory of mind and solipsism), but when you do that you're simply practicing rhetorics of reductionism. Materialism claims truth only as far as our senses can verify it (and make inferences from that). No further. This is a common sense compromise; You get somewhere, and get real engineering solutions even if in terms of the more eclectic philosophy "the system can't be sure of itself'. Yet philosophy can't build machines, materialism can. You can question that reality .... aaand back to common sense.

>There's no issue with Metaphysics that uve brought up
It is because all metaphysics are reasoned, thus expressed in logic. And logic is incomplete.

>logic necessarily precedes math, there's no chicken or the egg paradox there.
The paradox exists with logic itself. Math is just metaphysics built on logic, thus inheriting the paradox. It's only when you combine math with empiric observation you get certainty.

When considering completeness, you have to consider all parts of it. Philosophy is unsound because the system it is expressed itself in is unsound. It has no empiric grouding, thus no way to ascertain degree of certainty. Finally, platonic philosophy reasons backwards (inductively) which is strictly weaker form of logic which introduces further uncertainties on the level of reason alone (you can't reason your result forward, and be certain of same result = no formal proof).

>He's cancer, he uses reality to deny it.
Jesus christ. No wonder you found him boring, you have the reading comprehension of a nigger.

>materialists can't deal with concepts like numbers
yes i can i think math is information i think numbers only exist as a way to communicate information

pretty cool youtube series about information theory by the art of the problem if your interested, but you're not.
also you could read the canonical paper A mathematical theory of communication, but you won't.

Or you could keep waving your hands and tell me i don't have an answer cause you don't like my answer.

>you can't deal with important immaterial aspects of the universe
of course i cant deal with them i don't believe any aspects of the universe are immaterial.

how is information theory more primordial than math when it requires math to elaborate?

It's cute to watch babies talk about this stuff. Metaphysics isnt pure reason. That is the lie of Immanuel Kunt. Metaphysics is the study of being qua being

information theory is the study of information, the nature of how we study it doesn't define what it is.
Is language the most primordial element in universe because its required for elaboration? But wait, you can elaborate ideas with pictures, are pictures the most primordial element in the universe? you can elaborate ideas with body language, is body language the most primordial element in the universe? theres a current here, and its a cursory google search away, but you won't bother.

Pure reason is the epistemology that you use to study and use Metaphysics. You can't study Metaphysics w empiricism, get the cock out of ur ass

>materialism makes it true
Wat if we're in a simulation, then materialism is inherently untrue, what if ure schizophrenic etc

Materialism isn't necessarily true

>there is no meta narrative
>yet u must make 1
Very smart, yes world is fake but ur testosterone mind is certainly true, make the world as u see it. Absolute garbage

So then how do you deal w information, it's necessarily immaterial. Just because you can write it down, say it or paint a picture of it, or represent it in another form that doesn't make information itself material

I feel like ure being retarded on purpose. Every example u gave was preceded by "elaborate ideas". Ideas are clearly prior to human understanding. You can clearly map ontology > logic > math. Just as much as u can map good > truth > justice. Human usage of math is different from objective usage of math. You need ontology > logic > math > information theory. You can split it off, ontology > logic > language > information theory etc etc. You can't just throw information theory anywhere because it suits ur theory. Information theory and logic, or ontology, aren't playing a chicken egg game, ure just a moron

I'd tell u to read Plato or kant or hegel but u won't do it, it's such a simple Google search. It could be descartes but u won't do it, u could catch up on epistemology or Metaphysics but u wont oh gosh

My post probably won't be read by anyone and get no replies, but oh well let's at least try.
I'm a materialist mathematician, in the modern sense of the word materialism ( I don't believe in souls, dieties etc.,, but of course I believe in EM waves which are not strictly matter). The numbers have no "essence". They're useful concepts that we can reason about and deduce things from.
>How do materialist rationalize substance in and of itself if all things are made of it, even the smallest particles in existence?
I don't need to "rationalize" it, I believe what I can observe, that's all. I also doubt it makes sense to talk about the smallest particles in existence, unless you properly define what you mean by that.
>Does that not create an unending paradox?
No.
>Has matter always existed?
Dunno.
>If so, how do you rationalize a thing birthing itself into being?
I don't need to rationalize it. As long as I don't know a good reason why it couldn't happen, I'm not opposed to believing that it could happen.

go to for philosophical discussion

Super condensed probability waves.

math is fake

materialists believe in dualism between matter and energy you brainlet.

mathematical description is a product of the human mind, mathematical form is not...important distinction, my midwit friend

By what objectivity does X arbitrary cut-off become a border demarcating that there's a "thing" there? The wave function spreads infinitesimally far. The gravity of the earth reaches 4.5 billion light years out, is Earth's gravitational field part of its make up? If so, it the earth as large in light-years as it is old?

mathematical form created the human brain. there is no human mind, your entire body is alive together and works like a network, the brain is just a critical node, but so are your lungs or kidneys or liver or heart. a fingernail, a tooth or your hair are not.

>gravity of the earth reaches

what's missing from the standard model is the distinction between gravity A and gravity B.

gravity A is the type we normally experience, being close to massive objects and the force interactions exerted on that scale, typically out to the oort cloud or the heliosphere of a star.

gravity B is yet to be discovered, and it is universal gravitation that holds galaxies together and mediates interactions are superscale. with gravity B you could tunnel from one place to another, with gravity A you can only propagate as light does.

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Once you can't detect below a certain threshold, then that is the "border demarcating that there's a "thing" there". Electrons for example are elementary particles, but are essentially just condensed probability waves. And in the case of photons, pure probability waves since they have no mass.

>Existence > essence
>Physical > metaphysical

How could anyone believe this?

>mathematical form created the human brain. there is no human mind, your entire body is alive together and works like a network, the brain is just a critical node, but so are your lungs or kidneys or liver or heart. a fingernail, a tooth or your hair are not.

meaningless word salad. you can observe mathematical form yourself with simple geometry in nature. chemicals of the same molecule have the same structure, a shape with 3 sides is always a triangle, etc.

even if your subjective understanding of anything never becomes objective, that doesn't mean that nothing is real

math is a representation of matter.

Classic example of a STEMfag not knowing any philosophy but feeling entitled to pronounce on it. "Existence precedes essence" meant the opposite of what you're trying to say. It's Sartrean existentialism taken over from Heidegger, meaning roughly that the givenness of the world AS IT IS GIVEN precedes any later, abstract discussion of what it "really is." So, "existence precedes essence" would preclude any talk of a "physical," because what "physicality" is precisely an essence, it's an attempt to define the what-it-really-is of the things that are simply given in their unconscious haecceity.

Naive materialism is the dumbest fucking stance. The Greeks already went through all this as a single conversation. First they tried to deduce the arche as a single element, and then some guy said "maybe the arche is simply a featureless base element from which all other elements and things are formed?" and then people immediately said "okay but then is a formless non-stuff 'chaos'?" "okay but then is it a metaphysical principle of infinite potential for individuation into concrete forms?" "okay but then is tiny little bits of 'stuff'?" "okay but then is it tiny little shapes and 'atoms'?" and each one of these was likewise then obviously dissected in its obvious problems (if the fundamental "stuff" of reality is little atoms that behave in such and such a way, what is the metaphysical status of the rules governing their behavior? or one of the oldest metaphysical problems with atomism: is there a vacuum, then? what is the metaphysical status of empty space?). As soon as these ideas were revived in the medieval period or early modern period, people immediately thought about them carefully enough to re-tread the same grounds and point out the same logical problems with any one of these materialist solutions, at least becoming aware of them even if they ultimately decided on a materialist scheme. The Greeks did it all in the course of a single conversation about first principles. But of course in the modern world, with infinite books and resources and massive institutions set up to discuss these things, people can't think past the first or second moment of the Greek dialogue.

Modern thought really is mythic primitive. The mythic peasant brain has taken over everything and even learned to masquerade as a philosopher. We've somehow managed to create something even worse than arid logicist platonism, that has all the childishness of mythic thought with none of the charm but all the pretense of post-socratic thought with none of the rigour.

what? are you struggling with reading comprehension? the brain grows from genetic code as does the rest of the body.

mathematical form is natural, and created everything including the human genome. the reason shapes exist in nature is due to packing and compressibility, for tessellation the triangle is the simplest shape that packs the most space.

I deny that I was just explaining that's a definition for materialism

That's an interesting argument, I would reword it and say the physical world is being but it's definitely not essence.
How I come to it as that the material world can only be understood through your senses and your senses are inherently subjective. I'm a dualist or monist so I put everything in the world in one of two camps but I put 1 side stronger than the other.

Sure that's fair

a number is a part of a sign system. if we speak of what is essential to a number, meaning what is it we cannot take away without the number losing its identity as number, we must realize that a number relies on the entire system of numbers to make sense. for example, we cannot make comprehend what the number 2 means unless we have the number 1. so the number system is referential, its essence is also referential.

math is a description of real life, just like words
in speaking the language, you gain the ability to discover more than what your eyes can see

gay as fuck thread and gay as fuck humanities posters
stop pretending the things you believe on faith have rational merit and ill stop pretending you have any capacity for listening or imagination

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cringe